Monday

Writing on a day remembering Martin Luther King, Jr, and writing from the city of Birmingham, well of course.

If you are ever down – or up – or over – this way, be sure to go to the Civil Rights Institute, located right across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church. It’s an excellent, moving museum, with, indeed, the door of the jail cell from which King wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

That wasn’t the only area location in which King was jailed. In the Bessemer Hall of History, which we visited a few years ago, you can another door from another jail cell.

Why was King in jail in Bessemer? Interestingly enough, that arrest was King’s last, in 1967. The pre-arranged arrest was a fulfillment of punishments for charges related to the 1963 arrest (when “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” was composed):

After King’s release from the Birmingham Jail in 1963, he fought charges that he and several others protested without the proper permits. He appealed several courts’ rulings until in 1967 a Supreme Court judge upheld his conviction and ordered him to serve the remaining three days of his four-day sentence.

The fanfare surrounding his arrival in Birmingham prompted officials to reroute him to Bessemer to escape the overwhelming attention from the media and the public. 

And now, to digest:

Reading: Still on Don Quixote, which I will be for a while. Rereading Uncle Tom’s Cabin for school. Decided to be more intentional in my non-fiction reading, seeking out works that, while not being in my normal wheelhouse of exploration of obscure historical oddities, will hopefully work to help me sort out the current events, political, ecclesiastical and culture – which are threatening to drive me mad.

Beginning with known alt-right agitator Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.

Listening: Still a little fixated on Mendelssohn and Gypsy Jazz at the moment. As well as various sounds emanating from various rooms housing musical instruments.

Cooking: As I said last week, people’s schedules are bringing them home at mealtime…not so often. I’m going to do a Penne with Vodka Sauce tonight, and that will be it, I think, until Thursday. Made pizza dough on Saturday night, so that was dinner last night and the rest will be a substantial lunch for Working People one of the next two days. This is my preferred recipe, in case you are interested. I’ve mentioned before that it’s at its best at least two days after mixing.

Watching: Still on Mad Men. But we did squeeze in a movie last week – Out of the Past , which I wrote about here. The other night, I watched Fellini’s I Vitelloni – here’s my son’s take from some time back:

I occasionally wonder why some foreign titles get translated and others don’t. I Vitelloni, the word, is a slang in the Italian dialect around Pescara, Italy that indicates young men who don’t really do anything. They don’t contribute, they just consume. Derived from the Italian word for intestine, the idea was that they just waited to digest, providing nothing else of value. Other times the word is translated to “the guys”. I cannot imagine referring to this movie as The Guys. It’s too off from the point of the original word which, when translated, provides a very pointed indication of what the movie is about that “the guys” simply misses completely. There’s no real word in the English language (“loafers” comes relatively close) that means the same thing, so I Vitelloni is probably the best title for it to have outside of Italy

It’s Fellini, so it goes without saying that the shot composition, mood and work with actors is incomparable. Filmed off and on, ad hoc, when the actors had time off from other jobs, it is marvelously coherent and accomplished for a young director. Clearly expressive of Fellini’s inner life and themes that would recur: the terrible man who seemingly can’t or won’t help himself, the religious imagery, the temptations, the carnival, and the sad, puzzling, but inevitable emptiness of the day after the carnival.

What is refreshing – in the present day, overwhelmed by both politicization and formulaic commercialization of art – is the willingness of Fellini to just see and show us what he sees. Yes there is a point of view, but in this film at least, Fellini, it seems to be strikes the perfect balance of a worldview still informed, in some way, faintly, by a moral sensibility, but in which sinners, a few saints, and mostly ordinary folk, are offered without a speck of judgment.

To take in a piece art without feeling bullied or overtly manipulated to clap for an agenda of one sort or another or, come to think of it, pandered to and flattered , to be left with something to talk about – is, yes…refreshing.